Report by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) of the United States Senate, Majority and Minority Staff, February 26, 2014: Offshore Tax Evasion: The Effort To Collect Unpaid Taxes On Billions In Hidden Offshore Accounts.

“…On the negative side of the ledger, despite evidence of widespread misconduct by Swiss banks in facilitating U.S. tax evasion, Switzerland has continued to severely restrict the ability of Swiss banks to disclose the names of U.S. customers with undeclared Swiss accounts. As a result, the United States has obtained few U.S. names and little account information. In addition, despite the passage of five years, the U.S. Justice Department has failed to hold accountable the vast majority of the 4,700 UBS accountholders whose names were given to the United States. Aside from UBS, it has prosecuted only one of the Swiss banks suspected of misconduct, while setting up a program for hundreds of Swiss banks to obtain non-prosecution agreements without disclosing the names of a single U.S. customer with a hidden account. The promise of FATCA to disclose hidden offshore accounts has also dimmed due to regulations that opened disclosure loopholes which may enable many offshore accountholders to continue to conceal their accounts from U.S. authorities. In this Report, the Subcommittee’s investigation chronicles these developments and provides an assessment of U.S. efforts to combat offshore tax evasion through hidden foreign accounts. It examines, in particular, ongoing roadblocks erected by the Swiss Government to block bank disclosure of the names of former U.S. customers with undeclared Swiss accounts. It uses as a case study a major Swiss bank, Credit Suisse, that was deeply involved in facilitating U.S. tax evasion and whose unnamed U.S. customers continue to owe unpaid U.S. taxes on billions of dollars in hidden assets.”